Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Mehdi Shami Zanjani, Hamid Rahimian and Farnoosh Alami
Three <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> challenges discussed as being important for e-COPs <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> investigated virtual university
included: “ambiguity <strong>of</strong> incentives”, “inexperience community members” and “copy & paste culture” is
not similar to those mentioned in <strong>the</strong> literature before and we can suppose <strong>the</strong>m as exclusive
challenges <strong>of</strong> e-COPs in virtual universities. On <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand, it seems that ‘‘lack <strong>of</strong> willingness and
motivation to share knowledge’’, “weakness in leadership” and “absence <strong>of</strong> rich interactions” are
analogous to what various authors like Probst and Borzillo (2008), Zhang and Watts (2008), Loyarte
and Rivera (2007), Huang et al. (2007) and Kimble and Hildreth (2005) have stressed as crucial for
COPs and we can suppose <strong>the</strong>m as general challenges <strong>of</strong> e-COPs.
As a single-site case study, which was investigated only electronic communities <strong>of</strong> practice within one
virtual university; <strong>the</strong> study does not permit <strong>the</strong> extrapolation <strong>of</strong> results to a larger population.
It will remain for future research to refine and expand <strong>the</strong> proposed challenges <strong>of</strong> e-COPs in university
environments.
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